Tuesday, September 3, 2013

The Apex of Astounding Free Fiction.

A few more goodies this afternoon, including the always first rate Apex Magazine, an audio version of Astounding Stories #3, a story from Mad Scientist Journal, and part two of Atomic Julie's reading of "The Deadly City" E-books will resume tomorrow, Regan Wolfrom has a good list at SF Signal today.

Fiction
• At Mad Scientist Journal: "Isaac’s Butterfly" by Dan Hart. Science Fiction.
"My son discovered a giant green moth today. Its wing patterns are
asymmetrical, with five-fingered jagged appendages peeling off the
edges. It has three antennae protruding from its head instead of two.
I’ve never seen anything like this and believe it must be a new species."

• "Someone Like You" by Margaret Ronald
"Athéne — the Athéne who was never mine — used to say that I was always slow to catch on. Even if it wasn’t true to begin with, it’s become true, and so I guess it makes sense that I didn’t understand how serious the tether break was until the consequence ran smack into me. I doubt she’d appreciate the irony."

• "Turning the Whisper" by Anaea Lay
"Mike was there when Pavi’s kidneys failed. He was there when her liver,
swollen and scarred, shut down. And her heart. He floated in her
thickening, clotting blood, pressing all the conscious focus he could
fit into the nanites permeating her body, killing her."

• "The Boy Who Loved Death" by Hal Duncan
"Once far ago and long away, in a sleepy little village on the edge of
nowhere, a small town turned commuter-zone city-suburb, miners’ houses
swallowed into Seventies schemes of pebbledash matchboxes, Lego blocks
of buildings nestled soulless on winding roads all lined with parking
bays and patches of grass trimmed lobotomy neat…"

• "Body Language" by Mary Robinette Kowal
"Saskia leaned into the darkness above the stage, only vaguely aware of
the wood rail against her hips as she retied the left headstring on her
marionette. On the stage below, the Snow Queen’s head eased into
balance. The marionette telegraphed its stance back up the strings to
the control in Saskia’s hands. She ran the Snow Queen across the set to
check the repair, barely conscious of her own body on the bridge above
the stage. It was almost like being immersed in an AR suit."

• "I Can Transform You: The Carmillon" by Maurice Broaddus
"As only a few could afford cars, there were few streets in Old Town,
only emergency corridors. Most people made do with either the sidewalks
or the tram. If they were crazy enough to take the tram. Or crazier to
walk. Mac took the underground tram to Easton, not having any patience
for street preening and the ritual eyefuck of those who made him as a
cop. He had never lost that cop walk, that puffed-up, straight-backed
waddle of owning all he surveyed"

Audio Fiction
• At Apex: "Someone Like You" by Margaret Ronald
"Athéne — the Athéne who was never mine — used to say that I was
always slow to catch on. Even if it wasn’t true to begin with, it’s
become true, and so I guess it makes sense that I didn’t understand how
serious the tether break was until the consequence ran smack into me. I
doubt she’d appreciate the irony."

• At LibriVox: Astounding Stories 03, March 1930. Many readers. Science Fiction
"This is the third issue of the classic science fiction Astounding
Magazine. It contains the opening chapters of a 4 part serialized novel
by Ray Cummings, and stories by the prolific Capt. S. P. Meek, Will
Smith and R. J. Robbins, Sewell Peaslee Wright and A. T. Locke. (Summary
by Alan Winterrowd )"

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "The Deadly City - part 2 of 3" by Ivar Jorgenson, read by Julie Hoverson.
"Waking up to find themselves in a completely vacated city, several people try to cope."